Congrats to all on the conclusion of the 2015-2016 school year!  Chapman University Digital Commons has had an amazing year as well, and here are some of the latest developments for our repository.

 

Exponentially increased downloads

Chapman University Digital Commons’ impact has greatly expanded in 2015-2016, with four times as many downloads in this school year as in 2014-2015, our first year of operation.  At the beginning of this school year, works in Chapman University Digital Commons had been downloaded 25,000 times.  Since then, we’ve added over 100,000 more downloads to our counts, recently surpassing the 125,000 cumulative downloads mark.  Works from Chapman University Digital Commons are reaching further across the globe as well, with downloads coming from over 190 countries.
New collections

We’ve added or updated several exciting new collections this month:

Center for American War Letters Archive

The first series of letters for the CAWL Archive have been added to Chapman University Digital Commons this month.  This unique and extensive collection of unpublished letters, dating from every American military conflict, will continue to grow over time as the 100,000 letters in the collection are digitized and processed.  Please keep an eye on this important collection, and be sure to check out the first offering of these important and fascinating letters now.

 

Yorba-Chapman Writing Partnership Anthology of Journalistic Writing

In spring 2016, Dr. Noah Golden’s Teaching of Writing K-12 students paired up with the Journalism class at the Yorba Academy of the Arts.  Through collaboration over a four-month period, Chapman’s future teachers and Yorba’s junior high journalists engaged a deep writing process to write a series of features, editorials, and news articles, all connected in some way to the overarching theme of safety.  This anthology has now been added to Chapman University Digital Commons to serve as a testament of the creativity and scholarship of our undergraduate students, as well as to showcase Chapman’s partnerships with the local community.

 

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize and John and Margaret Class Student Book Collection Contest

This year, the Leatherby Libraries administered both the Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize and the John and Margaret Class Student Book Collection Contest through Chapman University Digital Commons, and published the winners’ entries to highlight the excellence of student researchers here at Chapman University.  Be sure to check out the winning entries!

 

Thank you, as always, for contributing to all the great examples of Chapman research and creative work in Chapman University Digital Commons.  As we add more quality content like yours, our reach keeps growing.  Please continue to spread the word, and remember to send any new publications, data sets, teaching materials, or other content to Kristin Laughtin-Dunker at laughtin@chapman.edu.